The Mystery of the Flesh Wand
by maxandcheeze
Summary: Intro: London, 1898. Character details have been liberally reimagined.
1. Chapter 1

Intro: London, 1989. Character details have been liberally reimagined.

The rare London sun for once emerged to bathe the sidewalks in precious warmth. Severus Snape hated the rare London sun. He hated towering over slovenly, dimwitted muggles who ogled at his imposing demeanor and long, flawlessly tailored black robes. Most of all, he hated abandoning his duties at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in his quest for a cure to this oddest of afflictions.

A month had passed since the last onset - the memory drew shivers from his spine. Yet some relish arose and lingered from applying a healthy fraction of his generous salary to the fickle purse of intrigue, for the medicine Snape sought promised untold power and like all powerful men, Snape delighted in the acquisition of even greater power. The thought twisted his stoic features into a crooked grin.

The arrival of his destination snapped Severus out of his reverie. Step by creaking step, the warped wood of the stairs whined as if one more pound would shatter them - still they received his weight and did not break. The final step departed from him and he stood facing the door to 512B Baker Street. All he had to do was knock.

…

Sherlock Holmes peeled his lithe body from the barren wooden chair he was perched upon. The 1889 Afghan revolver clinked as he loaded it with a single bullet. At the fifth knock he set his jaw and beckoned his prey to enter.

The rigged door slammed shut and locked behind his house guest. Deductions flurried across Sherlock's supple mind. A professor. Chemist? The ash ingrained into he fabric of his cuffs suggested so, however the sides of his boots displayed a powderous resin inconsistent with any substance common to chemistry. Piece by piece the master detective tamed the brewing tempest of observation within him. His prisoner's merciless lips, though curled in confusion, betrayed an iron constitution unlikely to surrender easily. He raised the revolver, meeting his foe's gaze at the deadly level of a gun.

"You'll forgive the discourteous summons. Detective Sherlock Holmes, at your service." Holes spoke in a steady voice, but his blood was electric with the masculine heat of utterly dominating a worthy opponent. "But the enigma that has continued to vex me is who exactly you are. So -"

Then the impossible. Sherlock's fingers, seconds ago wrapped tightly around an 1889 Afghan, now grasped only at air. Peer across the room as if to coax some new metaphysics from that austere grimace, he saw the subtlest twitch of amusement dance along those unforgiving eyes.

…

Snape indulged himself in one delicious second of his opponent's doe-faced beguilement. Then he dealt with the non-magical pest. Gentle constricting Sherlock's shoulders to the floor with a deft spell, he knelt slowly over the helpless body and blocked the flow of oxygen through the long, slender neck gasping ineffectively under his large, strong hands. Holmes was athletic; against anyone else the contours he twisted into would have been the textbook ideal of evasive combat, but his physical competencies were rendered lame beneath the total submission of Snape's magic.

Thick and milk-warm, like the heft of cathedral tunes, a sonorous barotone poured from above into the choking figure on the floor, "Conniving muggle fool. You wish to know the last mortal face you shall ever witness? So be it - I am Snape, the Potions Master!"

His momentary fury pulled him into clarity. There was no need to kill this muggle. Anxious to depart, he sent whispers of sleep through his fingertips into Sherlock's lips. The full, moist flesh shuddered beneath his touch, still hungry for the blissful void of supernatural night. But the contact was severed. The aching wetness of Holmes' mouth settled into a quizzical frown.

Severus rose, his muscles convulsing, "No, not now. This-", his blood surged, sending a painful hardness throughout his body. The room was spinning now and all he could discern was the polite smile tracking his staggered lurch, until even that faded black. The death-eater mustered his consciousness before the seductive oblivion, and relinquished.


	2. Chapter 2

Sherlock sat cross-legged. Reflecting on his posture, he recalled the Buddha statuettes sold down the street, inscribed with the Cantonese equivalent of "Flower Buddha in the Lotus Pose". Now, however, was no time for pensive sitting. Unfurling his legs, he crawled towards the inert body. Halfway along his route, he noticed his first edition copy of Sent Us Of The Air had fallen to the floor. Sent Us Of The Air was first published almost 50 years prior in 1851, starring a brilliant fictional detective named Weslie Brandypie. Bradypie's adventures had inspired Sherlock as a young orphan at Dobbin's Chateau for Destitute Children to dedicate his prodigious mental faculties to the detection of crime. He slid the antique book out of the way and crawled on. Sooner than he would've liked, as today was an exquisite day for crawling, his face was hovering over the unconscious Potions Master.

He placed his index and middle fingers on Snape's carotid artery to check for a pulse. There was none. Then he checked for blood flow, softly gliding his hand over the aristocratic face as he made his way to the earlobe. Blood flow was perfectly normal. I was exactly as he'd thought. Working his hand down the chest and hips, he lifted Snape's fingers into his own. Perhaps these fingers withheld one more drop of the magical slumber they had so effortlessly procured earlier. Only one way to find out – he softly pressed the fingertips into the receptive flesh of his parted lips. Hot, humid breath changed the texture of the skin on Snape's hands, just as the rough, scarred hands stimulated Sherlock's lips to falter gently as they dragged slowly over. Nothing, no magic this time. His body shuddered in pleasure just as the memory, then he let himself linger one moment more, meditating on the inexplicable sensation he derived from this man's touch. Snape opened his eyes.

…

Several snapped his hand back and gawked at Sherlock with a look of unapologetic hate.

"What in Hacate's name are you doing to my hand?" Severus reprimanded, as Sherlock's face turned the colour of a ripe tomato. Dark wizards, trolls, and dementors Snape could handle, but waking up with his hand in someone's mouth was just too much.

"We've been tricked," his response was awkwardly fast, "a criminal syndicate I've been hunting for some time must have foreseen my trap and positioned you to come here instead, probably hoping one of both of us would kill the other." This was somewhat of an understatement – he'd been constructing an elaborate lure to draw the criminals in for several months now. In the meantime he'd found few useful leads, and his only real piece of hard evidence was a burnt-looking page from a diary left at the scene of a murder.

"Are you utterly ignorant of the gravity of your predicament? The man you seek is no mere criminal and I am no mere gentleman. He and I are wizards!" Snape spoke slowly, giving each word time to settle into the air.

"Yes, I deduced as much," Sherlock said casually, as if impatient with being told something obvious.

"Deduced?" Snape spat the word incredulously, "you _deduced_ the existence of the magical world?" He really did not have time to waste, but this muggle was close to earning his respect.

"It wasn't very hard once I concluded that you are decidedly not a chemist. Really, perhaps you'd do better to spend less time casting spells and a little more time studying logic." He was treading dangerous waters, insulting a being whose power he neither fathomed nor understood, but he could not resist – playful condescension was simply too woven into his personality. Even Snape could perceive the intense curiosity in Sherlock's eyes, a curiosity that obviously trumped self-preservation. "I've tracked these men," Sherlock added, "across several bizarre, previously inexplicable murders. The only hard evidence I've collected is this page torn from some old journal." He walked to his work desk and retrieved a very old-looking sheet of torn paper. "Does this mean anything to you?" he asked, handing the page to Snape.

He snatched the document and read. As he did, his eyes widened with disconcerted understanding.

 _Dear Diary,_

 _No voice for my demons. Only_

 _the wand can save me – the_

 _secrets that lie in that flesh._

 _-JP_

The small, worn page slipped through his fingers and twirled lightly to the floor. Severus crumpled into the wooden chair that Sherlock had been perched upon earlier. "They know. How in Merlin's beard did they track the Wand?" Snape asked, not like a question, but like a surrender. Someone knew his secret – the secret that he'd kept his entire life. That he possessed the Flesh Wand. It was the secret that had forced him to spend his entire life running away from friendship, from love, from himself. He pictured Lily. He pictured his childhood friends. All things he'd turned away from to protect his secret.

Sherlock was still standing, motionless. For once in his life he was at a loss for words. Severus studied his odd companion before finally committing the words to irretractable air. Though he'd die before admitting it, he couldn't help but think of the word "cute" when he scrutinized the innocently confused man before him. Alright, perhaps innocent was a stretch, but he truly did perceive an inner light, a willingness to believe in the human spirit, which Snape had always wished he could have himself. He cast the thought from his mind and continued on.

"Mr. Holmes, have you ever felt like you were born in the wrong century?"

…

Sherlock was not in his element. He actually never had felt that way and was flustered that he couldn't predict where the conversation was headed. Yet there was more to his befuddlement than that. The wizard had not proven himself to be an ally nor even a friend. So why did Sherlock feel so helplessly comfortable in his presence?

"No, I have never felt that way," he deadpanned, "why?" His emotional turbulence was so absolute it came out sounding like confidence. Snape just sighed and relaxed his shoulders.

"Do you have another chair?" This might be a long story." Snape didn't even look at him for a response; he simply gazed towards the window while Sherlock shuffled off for additional seating.

Sherlock loved people's stories. Stories were the meat and potatoes of his work. Combating crime was a nice bonus, but Hell, he'd committed more crimes of his own than most of the poor souls he put away, all in the name of knowing what made someone tick – to learn who someone really is beneath the socially acceptable façade. Grabbing a cherry-oak stool, he raced back into the living room where Snape had not budged a single inch.

"So," Sherlock smiled gently but eagerly, "tell me your story."

"The day before I was born a powerful dark wizard performed a ritual. The purpose of the ritual was to summon an ancient, long lost artifact called the Flesh Wand. But in order to summon it, a soul must be plucked out of its ordained time and instead be born into the time of the ritual. By chance, it was my soul they stole from Time and endowed with the Flesh Wand. I know nothing of my destiny, only that this is not it. Maybe I was supposed to be a Roman Lord or Sumerian Warlock. Instead I languish in this barbaric epoch, teaching Potions to ungrateful brats at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

"The wizard who performed the ritual goes by the name Grendelwald and will stop at nothing to see the ritual completed, which fortunately requires me to be boiled alive in unicorn's blood. I would have been found and sacrificed the same night I as born were it not for my mother leaving me at the doorstep of a rather sordid orphanage, rather than keeping me at the hospital as Grendelwald expected her to do. Once I – "

"Wait a second, how old are you?" Sherlock interrupted.

"30." Snape replied flatly, a little indignant at being cut off.

"And what was the name of the orphanage you attended?" He could barely contain his vigor as the connection between past and present materialized in his head.

"Dobbin's Chateau for Destitute Children. Might we move along now to matters of relevance?" His annoyance at the veer in topic was increasing, but the edge in his voice signified more than that – Snape's youth was a dark place he sought to keep hidden, even from himself. Usually he succeeded in repressing those painful early years, thought the black abyss bubbled constantly beneath the surface of consciousness, always threatening to overflow. Blocking out the swift deluge of memory, he noticed Sherlock's awe-struck expression and raised an inquiring eyebrow.

"You – you're him. You're the kid they took away. I'm a few years younger than you, but when I came to Dobbin's after my parents were killed I heard rumours. They used to call you 'Snivelus'," a flash of anger crossed Snape's face, "and they said you were taken off to a loony bin. Heavens, we must have barely missed each other at the orphanage." Sherlock's thoughts turned to how fate, in all its irony, caused two lonely orphans to miss each other by mere months, only to reunite them decades later as broken adults. He wanted to confide his musings in Severus, to share his loneliness with someone who could understand. Instead he said, "A strange world is ours. Continue."

And so Severus continued. He told him about a lifetime spent hiding, running, fearing the inevitable. He spoke of obsessive magical study, master the Dark Arts, and eventually, receiving an invitation to this address to end the hunt once and for all.

"I truly believed everything would end today, for better or for worse. Whenever I am near Grendelwald the curse acts up. That's what you witnessed earlier. The Flesh Wand is a part of me, I will never surrender its power to that monster. It's not just a matter of self-preservation. Unlocking the secret to the Wand's power is my only hope of escaping this artificial birth and claiming my true destiny." Destiny. The word stung him just to speak it. Pleadingly, he looked into Sherlock's eyes for reassurance, and found it. What was hidden behind those eyes that made Snape's suffering melt away effortlessly?

"Your narrative has been most elucidating, Mr. Snape – "

"Just Severus will suffice." Snape interrupted, not sure why he even cared.

"Very well, Severus. Synthesizing your history with my previous knowledge of the case, I believe I know how we can intercept Grendelwald's servant, at their next attack. Bur first – what do you know about Demonology?" Sherlock smiled when he saw Severus' lips twitch in amused surprise. _If nothing else_ , he thought, _this is going to be fun_.

 **A.N. Despite the icy reception to the first chapter, I will see this story through to the end. These characters deserve better than the shambles their broken lives have crumbled into.**

 **Lots more chapters to come, and if you couldn't tell already, let me warn you – this story will have slash. Enjoy!**


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